Fun Summer Activities for Kids

Creative and Easy Ideas for Summer Activities for Young Kids

May 30, 2008

It's easy to keep your kids entertained this summer with these fun backyard crafts and activities.

With summer here, your kids will have long days to keep themselves amused. Here are some easy ways to keep young kids busy and happy.

Outdoor Fun Ideas

Mix colored sand in with regular sandbox sand for more variety. Encourage kids to be more creative than just building sand castles. Have them dig out a road, use a small tube to create a tunnel, and bring in mini cars. Hide some dinosaur bones for them to do a dig or get some small plastic animals from the dollar store to create a safari landscape.

Set up an outdoor stage. Kids love to perform. Throw a couple of blankets over a clothesline to use as a curtain. For costumes, put out some old clothes, or the kids' old dance recital outfits or Halloween costumes.

With chalk, sketch out a twisting driving course on the driveway for kids to navigate with their bikes, cars or scooters.

A great outdoor summertime craft for kids is to let them paint and decorate an unfinished bird house. They can be purchased inexpensively at any craft store. Consider placing the finished birdhouse outside a child’s bedroom window so they can see the birds up close.

Kids love large cardboard boxes. Use them to make a pretend car or camper, a fort (they can cut out windows), or attach several together to make a train or a tunnel that they can crawl through.

Kids love face painting. There are kits that offer safe non toxic face and body paints that wash off easily from companies like Snazaroo. Have the kids change into their bathing suits and they can have fun painting each other. Alternatively, for girls, put out some old makeup (make sure it is hypoallergenic) and a few hand mirrors and let the girls have fun.

Introduce kids to popular games from your childhood, such as croquet and marbles (if they are over 4 years old).

Have the kids try making a teepee. Take four large branches and tie them together at the top with strong twine, then wrap an old bed sheet around the whole structure.

Water Fun Ideas

If you have a kiddy pool, bring out the bath toys for extra fun. If your kids aren’t using their kiddy pool anymore, place it on a low table and use it as a water play table instead. They can have boat races or rubber duck races, make it a fishing pond or use it with sand toys such as funnels, sifters and spinning mills.

If kids want to cool off and you’re not crazy about water guns, instead fill up squeeze bottles with water or give them buckets of water with soft new sponges that they can toss at each other.

Believe it or not a fun activity for kids is to wash the car. They like to feel useful and washing a car is a simple enough job. If they are really young, let them wash their wagon or tricycle.

The copyright of the article Fun Summer Activities for Kids in Kids Outdoor Activities is owned by Gail Oliver. Permission to republish Fun Summer Activities for Kids in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.